(Teetering Over) The Abyss

I teeter over the abyss
And you loom large over me
Large and far
The cat is resting still
At the corner of the bed
And Wojtek snores beside me
My back is itching
And there’s no one to scratch it
And that is when I feel myself dangle
Far and large
Over its gaping void

Songs I don’t hear anymore
I can barely remember their names
You send me a world half-forgotten
And half indelibly not
Stuff it into an envelop
And rekindle the dying creed

The years have passed
Too many of them
And I have too
Now I await an envelop
And a hope
Of my return

Nothing

What do you say
When you’ve said it all before
When words regurgitate themselves
And life stumbles along in endless mockery?

What do you say
When the silence goes dumb
And the noise no longer makes sense
And the sadness still hasn’t managed to kill you?

What do you tell
The tables on the sidewalk
The uprooted lavender
Its weeping stinking the air?

What is there to say
But… nothing.

Circles

And so it goes again
Another circle
Just as round as the one before

In the Making

The sun was so bright in Cadiz it blanched everything into a silent anger.
They were walking ahead of me, figures drenched in white
And I could see the past in the making.

The night fell, heavy and sullen, on Los Caños.
And I resigned myself to potatoes and eggs
And ketchup with a taste of regret.

The forest stretched like the rest of my life, forbidding and haunted.
And in the back seat
They weighed on my mind.

And now it’s gone.
A moment so past
It almost never happened.

What do you frame when you see memory happening?
And what do leave in your head,
Trailing like a dead dog’s tail?

POLL / Preliminary Results

I had asked for a favor: I've been thinking about submitting some of my poems to Slate Magazine Online, and I needed help to pick 5. Now here are the contenders for "Round 1":

Leaves (August 12, 2004)
Comfortably Numb (August 3, 2004)
Piece of Damascus (April 15, 2003)
Iodine (March 19, 2003)
Absence Materialized (January 4, 2003)

The runner-ups are:

3 votes:
I Write (October 10, 2003)

2 votes:
Exit (August 6, 2004)
Life (July 18, 2004)
Ghosts (June 22, 2004)
Remnant of You (February 21, 2004)

1 vote:
Puki Says (August 11, 2004)
Sunset (August 1, 2004)
Grief (July 14, 2004)
Antequerra (July 9, 2004)
Tomorrow (October 10, 2003)
Vomit (October 2, 2003)
Life on a Beautiful Day (April 16, 2003)
Pieta (April 15, 2003)
Holes (April 15, 2003)
Pieces of Me (April 10, 2003)
Breathing Corpse (April 4, 2003)
The Memory of Me (January 22, 2003)

I'll keep you posted on what becomes of "Round 1". Again, if you do not agree, there might be more rounds; so VOTE! Any suggestions would help. Older poems are filed by month under "Archives" to the right. Also, if you have any editing suggestions/comments, please do not hesitate to post them/let me know; I do take them into consideration. And many thanks in advance!

Red Light District

A scent wafts by
Humid and warm
Late on a Sunday dusk
Congealing with the certainty
Of things past.
A childhood, a grandmotherly bosom
And the naïve belief in unconditional love;
You shoo them like flies
And walk on, cutting the space
In front of you like wads of butter
That quickly heal and fill in your void.
The brick tilts its head sideways
And musters some pity for you
Reluctantly, fearing its waste.
A cat spreads its thighs
On a window sill
In a domesticated Philadelphian retort
To the Red Light District.
A black iron gate,
Genuine boredom,
Lives muted
Behind fake-candlelit windowpanes.
And I fear to repeat myself:
the same words, same nausea,
same silence, and the same
warm humid scent wafting by…

The Scream

Like the whereabouts of a heartache
Like a childhood gone by
Like a chinchilla gone missing
Like the silences of the oud
that night
Like a windblown smile
that has faded too young
Like the taste of your hunger
Like the rest of the race
Like your face ablaze
with a familiar song
Like the crackling on the radio
before it all went out
Like a lingering smell in the bedroom
where no one remains
Like the hairs on the back of your hand
when you calm my hair
Like your laughter ringing on
between walls of trees
Like the frame hanging empty
on an emptier wall
Like the shreds of a canvas
in the shadows forgot
On a sidewalk, by a hydrant
waiting to be stolen

Mothers

We make new mothers
As we grow older
So when our mother dies
We can pretend we're still living.

Another

What's another brick in the wall?
What's another word on the page?
What's another story gone sour?
What's another bad poem?

What if it's all over?
What if they become strangers again?
Who gives a damn?

Leaves

I scatter myself
That you might find me
Over the edges I smear me
Thin and grey
I search for you
But you have fallen
Like leaves
Incessantly
So brittle and crisp

You collect at my feet
And I drown in you
But you have fallen
Away from me
Away from yourself
Away from the tree

Nothing remains
But words splattered
In a pink book
Stashed over the porn
Faded pictures
And paler recollections
And friendships turned
Frigid and bland

I live with it
Try to embrace it
But it takes practice
To embrace nothing

Puki Says

To Wojtek

He said, I am glad you found your inner voice
But does it have to be so loud?
He said, I am a waste of flesh
He said, Will it be okay?
And I said nothing;
I just stared.

For five years now I've said nothing;
I've just stared.
And he's still there
Saying nothing
And that said it loudest of all.

Antequerra

A street café in Antequerra
The sun blazing on your face
My temper simmering in the heat
I melt
A glow off the cobblestone
A street ascending amid white-washed walls
A nasty mood for no reason
I miss it

Revelation

TODAY I

Today I found out
That my parents are only human
Today I found out
That the absurdity of the world
Is the back of a mother's head


TODAY II

Today I shall fall from the stars
Today I am born again
Today I repeat myself
In resemblences of redundancy

Today I shall shatter the skies
And tumble into nothing
Today I shall regurgitate my words
Ad nauseum

Ghosts

And so it fades.
Slowly it fades.
Quickly it fades.
Immediately.
It dissipates into thin air,
Into empty fridges
And emptier faces.
It shrinks,
It bows,
And it exits backwards,
Its fragile being wrapped
Into a tight ball.
Ephemral,
And volatile,
And brittle
It drips onto the floor
As I walk,
And leaves me as before,
Empty and pale.
I fall back into my former self,
My lack of one.
I fall back into… silence.
I don’t reach out,
I don’t cry out after it.
I just watch it go,
Like a thousand times before.
I almost even bid it adieu.

Its tight upward streets
And whitewashed walls,
Its afternoon still
And dizzying sun.
Its unabashed sense of contentment.
They all leave me
Like a dream.
And I don’t like what I wake up to.
I want to go back to sleep
But the alarm keeps ringing.
The coffee tastes bitter and hollow
As before,
And as before
It gives me a dull heartburn.
And yet I swallow.

Somewhere ahead
They will all meet again,
And I’ll be there.
Somewhere ahead
I’ll be once again where I were,
Where I want to be.
Somewhere ahead,
Even if only in our permanent absence.
I will dance with ghosts
If ghosts are all I love.
A ghost amongst ghosts.

Trickle

I trickle down
Between four walls
Is the room half empty
or half full?

The silence drowns
In loneliness
And darkness hugs the dust

I want to say
Something different
But everything is all the same

I want to smile
To sleep… To sleep…
I want to breathe
Where dreams cease

I am sick of myself
Of my company
Of sentences that start with me
And end where they begin

Remnant of You

Remnants of you around the house
Your stubble speckled over the sink
And the cat’s incessant whining
I curl myself into a cold ball
And pray for unconsciousness

You vanished
Like you never happened
Like a memory of a memory
Like a banal dream
You erased yourself
Off my consciousness
And I became
In my vacancy
The only remnant of you